Wine Dude: Pink wines are not always sweet and sugary

Pink. Guys need a lot of swagger to pull it off. Cage fighter Chuck Liddell wore pink toenails during his heyday almost 10 years ago. NBA All-Star Dwyane Wade styled bright pink, skinny jeans during Miami’s title run this spring.
Next month, football players will sport pink shoes and wristbands for breast cancer awareness.
But, fact is, in our society pink largely means sugary and girly. If that weren’t the case, Victoria’s Secret wouldn’t make a platinum mine off of hawking $30 Love Pink T-shirts.
Lately, I’ve been drinking a lot of pink wine. It’s good stuff: rose (say it with two syllables, not one). I’ve been asking friends about pink wine, and more than a few give me a knee-jerk response, “Ooooooo, too sweet, I don’t like white zinfandel.”
If you like white zin, I’m not here to talk you off of it; drink what you like.
I want to make sure that everyone realizes that most rose wines (sometimes called blush or Rosado) are not especially sweet, unless they cost less than $10. Above $10, you’ll get a dry-style wine. Whatever you like, chilled down, they are perfect for these end-of-summer days.
Rose wine is normally made from regular dark-skinned grapes. When dark red wines are made, the crushed light-colored juice is kept in contact with the dark skins, which leach out their color and give that tannic bite that most of these wines have. When the winemaker wants to make a rose wine, the grape skins are only in contact with the juice for a short period. Less time next to the skins means less color and tannins.
Think about dyeing Easter eggs. Put the egg in the red dye for a short period, you get pink. Put them in longer, you get a deeper red.
One exception to this is rose champagne, which is a blend of white and dark juice from different grapes.
Rose-style wines usually have nice, fresh acidity and bright fruit flavors. If you want a wine that tastes more like fresh strawberries than any other grape wine I’ve had, pick up a bottle of Chateau Grande Cassagne. The 2011 vintage is available now, and I’ve seen this maker’s rose in several local shops.
For you malbec lovers, try Crios, a rose made in Argentina. It’s on the sweet edge of rose-style wines, but is excellent when chilled.
For a tasty domestic one, try the Waterstone rose, made in California from cabernet sauvignon grapes.
One I really fell in love with a few years ago is a Spanish rose from the winery Naire. There’s a still version, along with a sparkling one.
I help run a monthly blind tasting group. In August, the theme was rose wines. Except for one funky wine that reminded me of an old tire, everything was tasty.
The winner was a French rose, the 2011 Chateau Rollau de By. It’s very good, a solid B+ grade from me.
One more thing with rose wines: Be wary of older vintages on shelves. Unless you know it’s built to age well, pass on wines from 2009 or older; they lose their freshness and often pick up a weird oxidized taste with time.
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